There are two things, amongst many others, which I consider unnatural. One is flying and the other is running. I don’t believe humans were designed to sit for hours on end in a pressurized aluminum tube at 35,000 feet, slowly ingesting hundreds of other people’s flatulence and halitosis.
Equally, I don’t get running. Long-distance running. Marathons. I don’t mean sprinting. Sprinting is an exercise in quick thrill, in speed, in machismo (male or female). It’s the blue-ribbon event. I used to be a 100m specialist at school. I had natural speed but never really trained or developed it. I came third in the Amateur Athletics Association Schools City championship. Top three went through to the County finals and top three from that went through to Nationals. I came sixth out of a field of eight in the County finals which, strangely, I have always thought was something to humble-brag about “I suppose it wasn’t that bad, you know, without any training, without wearing proper spikes, I beat two county-level runners…..”.
But just running, long-distance, for the sake of running, seems like an unfinished idea. You’re running for what? Just to get to where the running ends. Running for me is a component of something else, a game or a sport, not an end in itself. That’s why people say things like “I love cooking”, not “I love stirring”. People say “my hobby is making pastry desserts and other puddings”, not “my hobby is whisking”.
It is in this context that you my be surprised to learn that two weekends ago I was lining up with a handful of work colleagues and hundreds of strangers to run a 5k.
The event catered for the whole spectrum of ability (or affectation depending on how you look at it): 42k for Forrest Gump aficionados, 21k for the mildly deranged, 10k for those trying to look respectably athletic, and 5k for the physically remedial group who want to move as little as possible whilst still being able to talk about “taking part” (just my ticket).
I say that I lined up to “run” a 5k but that word covers a wide range of physical motion and speed. For the first kilometer, I jogged along at a pace that, frankly, a person with moderately long legs and the absence of rickets could walk. As I hit the 1km mark, with a mild wave of euphoria that I had actually “run” a whole kilometer washing over me, I decided to reward myself for this marvelous accomplishment by starting to walk.
At this point, one of my work colleagues (you know, the excitable one, the one who had suggested we all take part in the event because it would be fun) decided to hold herself back with the straggling pack (of which I had anointed myself chief warden) to encourage us to push ourselves. So what would have been a perfectly agreeable remaining 4k of casual jog-walk-jog (or rather, walk-walk-walk-jog-walk-walk-walk) became a battle of wills. My will that the truth of my repeated prior declarations of unfitness must now be demonstrated in all its glory to an onlooking world pitted against her will that, in the space of 5k, I could plumb hidden depths of human endurance and surprise myself into banishing decades of self-loathing.
A couple of stalwarts of the Stragglers’ Club suddenly decided to revoke their membership and so for most of the way I was the singular focus, some kind of pet project for my Personal Trainer-cum-colleague who shouted encouragement as if she was being paid by the word. At points she seemed to be channeling some Running Nazi-vibe. I half-expected her to start angry-whispering to me like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket: “you’re mediocrity is stinking up the whole street, boy! People like you shouldn’t be allowed to breed!”
I’m pretty sure that to some onlookers it resembled a day out for a special needs runner with his paid carer. I tried to distract from my world-class mediocrity with the odd well-timed comic remark. At one point my colleague (I’ll call her Helga) snatched my water bottle away from me (the excuse that I was physiologically incapable of sipping water without stopping was becoming a bit see-through) and I confided in a fellow runner (a complete stranger) that I didn’t know who this woman was who had stolen my water bottle and was berating me about my running. It seems my ability to convey dead-pan humour in that moment was about as effective as my cardio endurance: I swiftly dropped the gag before the runner reported the “harassment” I was suffering to a steward.
A sprint finish to try to look good for the awaiting crowd at the end (for all of 45 metres) and the “race” was done. My time was 43 minutes. For proper runners, that will look like a typo. For me, it was good enough. I can’t say that I collapsed at the end in a pool of tears and endorphins and learned to finally love myself. But I can say that I enjoyed the group breakfast we had together afterwards, consuming seven times as many calories as I had just burned.
And then a strange thing happened in the week that followed.
I started going out on my own – running. Trying to increase my endurance. Helga signed me and others up for the next run which is in a couple of weeks: the Color Run (kind of the Festival of Holi meets Athletics).
I watched a YouTube video of last year’s Color Run and was dismayed to see a lot of people frolicking around the course, people ambling along, chucking coloured powder at each other, having fun for goodness sake. How on earth was I supposed to shave a few minutes off my one and only 5k time if I had to ziz-zag my way through people who had no business being at a “run”? How could I make the mind-over-matter leap to get from jog-walk-walk-walk-jog all the way to jog-walk-jog? I picture myself discreetly barging kids out of my way as I try to maintain a straight trajectory to the goal: the end of the running.
Enough of this cooking, I just want to whisk!